The Search Engine Blog

Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category

Even Google will admit that there are more malware, virus and other bad site listed in their search results. It’s becoming more difficult to stop these inventive evil geniuses. Be careful what you click on is still very good advice.
Anyone seeing a huge increase in unflagged malware links?

Google is personalizing your search even when you aren’t logged in. Wondering why the person on the computer next to you gets different search results than you do? It’s because Google personalizes your search based on what you have search for before. They are now officially announcing that they are doing it even if you aren’t logged into your Google account. It appears they’ve been doing it randomly for some time. Now it’s official and on all the time…unless you turn it off each time you search.

If you are searching for your own web sites and they are always coming up in the top ten, they may not really be in the top. It may just be because Google has learned you like that type of site. Clear your cookies to see the raw results.

This has changed marketing approaches for some time now and those marketers who are on the ball have been emphasizing other metrics than raw ranking reports. Rankings matter less with this type of a system in place.
Official Google Blog: Personalized Search for everyone

Google, Bing and Yahoo all watch your searches, clicks and more. It is suppose to help you find more meaningful results. It wrecks havoc with ranking reports making them virtually useless. For those of you who don’t want them watching you, or you want pure results, here’s a way to help avoid tracking. This is geeky and requires a good working knowledge of computing. I don’t have an issue with the paranoid part. What gets me is the search engine thinking it’s smarter than me by guessing what I really meant.

How to Stop Google, Yahoo & Bing from Tracking Your Clicks

That’s not news, yet people still have fits about their site keywords. Google has blogged about it yet again trying to clear up people’s incorrect perceptions. I prefer to go straight to the “manual”. Here’s a link to what Google does pay attention to….when they want to.
Meta tags – Webmasters/Site owners Help

Now that Yahoo! is serving up Bing results, the question is, are you Bing-abled? Together Yahoo! and MSN’s Bing comprise about 30% of the market. Being optimized for Google only is no longer an option. Ever since the talk of MSN and Yahoo! merging, I’ve been paying attention to having my customer’s sites MSN friendly. It was a guess that is paying off. Now that it’s official for ten years, how is your site doing?
SEO: Optimizing for Bing is a No-Brainer Now | SearchViews – Daily insights on Search Marketing, Social Media and SEO by Reprise Media.

We are #1 for “SEO Company”. No, this site really isn’t and neither is the person who sent me a messsage saying they were first in Google for SEO Company. I’m still appaled at these bold spam messages that are trying to get you suckered into using their SEO Company services. It’s easy to do a search and determine that they aren’t number one or number anything for any search term. And yet I’ll bet a number of people signed up for their services even though they were using a gmail account.

Enter a word or two and find out what questions users are entering that are related to that word. I find this to be a excellent tool to learn what to write about. Need a nudge to get those creative juices flowing? Want to know what type of content needs to be added to your site? Jump out here and try a few words.

Keyword Questions – Keyword Research Tool

Filled with doom and gloom? Step away from the tv news and grab a cup of reality. If you sit with your head in your hands, you’ll get just what you deserve….a missed opportunity. Online spending percentages are suppose to surpass retail for the first time in history. Whether it’s saving gas or whatever the reason, who cares. Make certain your site is in order and get out there and sell stuff. Depression is for wimps.

Follow the link below for a writeup and audio on getting your site into shape.

Ecommerce Holiday Playbook

Upload your images and have them appear on GoogleMaps. It’s not a new service, but perhaps one you’ve overlooked. Grab some images of your area (perhaps including your business) and upload them….up to 2 Gb worth.

Panoramio – Sign in

Can bad reviews help your rankings? Perhaps. Here’s a forum thread where the poster complains about a competitor ranking high perhaps because of all the bad reviews with links in them. There may be other factors of course, but it does raise an interesting question. Google sees links. They may not know that these are bad reviews and so treat the links as negatives. These complaints may actually be helping this company sell even more product.

Want better rankings. Maybe you should practice poor customer service?

My competitor has lots of links from people complaining about them!